Despite
making overall success in saving children’s lives, the report shows
that child survival gaps have roughly doubled in urban areas of Kenya
between 1990 and 2013.
Kenya’s
ranking on this index has improved slightly. Last year, it was placed
143 out of 178 countries. This year, it is 138 out of 179 countries.
According
to the report, in the slums of Nairobi, maternal and child mortality
rates are 45-50 percent higher than the national average. This is
attributed to poor quality of emergency obstetric care services combined
with inadequate essential equipment, supplies, trained personnel and
skills owing to the burgeoning privately owned, substandard, often
unlicensed clinics and maternity homes in slum areas.
“As this year’s report on the State of the World’s Mothers
shows, one of the worst places in the world to be a mother is in an
urban slum. Poverty, and the social exclusion that goes with it, leave
the urban poor trapped in overcrowded, makeshift or decrepit housing
with limited access to affordable health services. These difficult
living conditions contribute to very high mortality rates for mothers
and young children living in Kenya’s informal settlements,” said Duncan
Harvey, Save the Children Country Director.
The State of the World’s Mothers 2015 report focuses on one vulnerable group of children that urgently needs more attention – those living in urban poverty.
Save
the Children’s report for the first time evaluates the often huge
differences in under-five death rates and health care coverage for rich
and poor urban children in developing countries. This effort represents
the first major international effort to identify urban child survival
gaps in developing countries.
“It
focuses on the hidden and often neglected plight of the urban poor and
presents the latest and most extensive analysis to date of health
disparities between rich and poor in cities,” he continued.
The
State of the World’s Mothers report further shows that 54 percent of
the world’s population lives in urban areas. This figure is projected to
increase to 66 percent by 2050. Most of this increase will be in Africa
and Asia.
In
the developing world, one third of urban residents live in slums – over
860 million people. If this percentage remains the same, the number of
slum dwellers in the developing world could reach the 1 billion mark by
2020.
WHO
estimates that nearly a billion people in the world live in urban
slums, shanty towns, on sidewalks, under bridges or along the railroad
tracks.
The
Millennium Development Goals have unquestionably been good for public
health. The annual number of young child deaths, stuck at more than 10
million for decades, has fallen by half since 1990. Compared to 1990, at
least 17,000 fewer children are dying every day. The global under-5
mortality rate has been cut by 45 percent during the same period, from
90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 46 deaths per 1,000 live births
Uganda’s
and Ethiopia’s cities of Kampala and Addis Ababa top East African
cities closing child survival gap between rich and poor. These cities
have improved conditions for all children and national urban data
suggests that they are closing the gap in survival between well-off and
poor children under the age of five. They are increasing access to basic
maternal, newborn, and child services; raising health awareness; and
making care more affordable and accessible to the poorest urban
families.
Among
capital cities in high-income countries, Washington, DC has the highest
infant death risk and great inequality. Babies in D.C.’s lowest income
neighborhood (Ward 8) are 10 times more likely to die than babies in the
wealthiest part of the city (Ward 3).
The
United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) defines a slum
household as one that lacks one or more of the following conditions:
easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price,
access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet
shared by a reasonable number of people, security of tenure that
prevents forced evictions, durable housing of a permanent nature that
protects against extreme climate conditions and not more than three
people sharing a room.
The
report is issued at an opportune time as the international community
transitions to a new development agenda. December 2015 will mark the end
of the first set of Millennium
Development Goals and will also be the launch of the post-2015 framework (sustainable development goals).
Save the Children’s 16th annual Mothers’ Index
assesses the well-being of mothers and children in 179 countries – more
than in any previous year. It evaluated data from dozens of cities in
developing countries and 25 cities in industrialized countries
No comments:
Post a Comment